Reached

you?”
    He doesn’t answer.
    “And I love you,” I tell him. “We are still looking for your cure.”
    He doesn’t stir. I tell him poems, and I tell him that I love him. Over and over again. As I watch, I think the liquid dripping into his veins helps; there is a warming to his face, like sun on stone, when the light comes up.

CHAPTER 32
    KY
    H er voice comes back first. Beautiful and gentle. She’s still telling me poetry.
    Then the pain comes back, but it’s different now. My muscles and bones used to hurt. But now I ache even deeper than that. Has the infection spread?
    Cassia wants me to know that she loves me.
    The pain wants to eat me away.
    I wish I could have one without the other, but that’s the problem with being alive.
    You don’t usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.
    I don’t deserve either her love or this illness.
    That’s a stupid thought. Things happen whether you deserve them or not.
    For now, I’ll ride out the pain on the song of her voice. I won’t think about what will happen when she has to leave.
    Right now, she’s here and she loves me. She says it over and over again.

CHAPTER 33
    CASSIA
    X ander finds me there next to Ky. “Leyna sent me to bring you back,” he says. “It’s time to get to work again.”
    “Ky’s drip was out,” I say. “I wanted to stay until he looked better.”
    “That shouldn’t have happened,” Xander says. “I’ll let Oker know.”
    “Good,” I say. Oker’s anger will carry much more weight with the village leaders than mine will.
    “I’ll be back,” I tell Ky, in case he can hear. “As soon as I can.”

    Outside of the infirmary, the trees grow right up to the edge of the village buildings. Branches scrape and sing along one another when the wind comes through them. So much life here. Grasses, flowers, leaves, and people walking, talking, living.
    “I’m sorry about the blue tablets,” Xander says. “I—you could have died. It would have been my fault.”
    “No,” I say. “You didn’t know.”
    “You never took one, did you?”
    “Yes,” I say. “But I’m fine. I kept going.”
    “How?”
he asks.
    I kept going by thinking of Ky.
But how can I tell Xander that
?
“I just did,” I say. “And the scraps in the tablets helped.”
    Xander smiles.
    “The secret you mentioned on one of the scraps,” I say. “What was it?”
    “I’m a part of the Rising,” Xander says.
    “I thought that might be what you meant,” I say. “You told me on the port. Didn’t you? Not in words, I know, but I thought that’s what you were trying to say. . . .”
    “You’re right,” Xander says. “I did tell you. It wasn’t much of a secret.” He grins, and then his expression sobers. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about the red tablet.”
    “I’m not immune,” I say. “It works on me.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “They gave it to me in Central,” I say. “I’m certain of it.”
    “The Rising promised me that you were immune to the red tablet, and to the Plague,” Xander says.
    “Then they either lied to you or made a mistake,” I say.
    “That means you would have been vulnerable to the original version of the Plague,” Xander says. “Did you go down with it? Did they give you a cure?”
    “No.” I understand what’s puzzling him. “If the red tablet works on me, then I was never given the initial immunization when I was a baby. So I should have gone down sick with the original Plague. But I didn’t. I just got the mark.”
    Xander shakes his head, trying to figure it out. I am sorting through, too. “The red tablet works on me,” I say. “I’ve never taken the green. And I walked through the blue.”
    “Has anyone else ever walked through the blue?” Xander asks.
    “Not that I know of,” I say. “I had Indie with me, and she helped me keep going. That might have made a difference.”
    “What else happened in the canyons?” Xander asks.
    “For a long time, I wasn’t with Ky at all,” I say. “We started in a village full of other Aberrations. Then three of us ran to the Carving; me, the boy who died, and Indie.”
    “Indie is in love with Ky,” Xander says.
    “Yes,” I say. “I think she is, now. But first it was you. She used to steal things. She took my microcard and someone else’s miniport and she used to look at your face whenever she could.”
    “And in the end, it was Ky she wanted,” Xander says. I detect a note of bitterness in his